Run, Karen Run….with Chicago’s working class
Filed under: Uncategorized
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis
at the 2014 Mexican Independence Day parade in Chicago
When the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) denounced Chicago’s traditional racism and segregation as “education apartheid” and linked school closings to corporate privatization of schools and real estate speculation, it helped provide a clear narrative that I heard over and over again from Chicagoans at rallies, hearings and meetings all over the city.
Apartheid is a harsh word, but it was accurate and on point.
So when CTU President Karen Lewis came out in support of Fight for $15 and expressed strong opposition to cuts in vital city services that hit hardest at Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, she helped cement her reputation as a leader of the working class against racism and class exploitation.
Clarity on race and class is essential for her to win a mayoral election in Chicago. Because what is good for the working class is good for the city as a whole. Read more
The USA’s toxic culture of white wealth
Filed under: Race and gender, Society and Economy, US politics
“Despite all evidence to the contrary, blaming black culture for racial inequality remains politically dominant. And not only on the Right.”—–Jonah Birch & Paul Heideman
This morning I read the latest attempt to chip away at the “culture of poverty” mythology that has survived all previous attempts to debunk it. Published in the always interesting Jacobin Magazine, the article “The Poverty of Culture” by Jonah Birch & Paul Heideman got me rethinking my own ideas on the subject.
Photo Credit: Jacobin
So here goes a BobboSphere reaction to the Jacobin article:
If you believe the dominant narrative in today’s mass media and political culture, racial inequality and its accompanying economic inequality is the fault of African Americans because of their supposed “culture of poverty”. This monstrous canard has been disproved in countless studies, but somehow its proponents never get voted off the island.
What the corporate owned media does not dwell upon is the toxic “culture of wealth” that exists within the white corporate elite (yes, it is still white dominated). They prefer to overlook the white corporate elite’s propensity toward coldblooded mass violence in the form of the wars they help start, of their criminality as evidenced by their massive financial and environmental crimes, or their contempt for work as shown by the habit of driving down wages, and assigning jobs based on race and gender while treating employees with inhumane disrespect. Read more
The corporate attack on public education: A threat to human survival?
Filed under: Education, Environment, Society and Economy
“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”
― Rachel Carson
About 70,000 years ago humanity appears to have faced its greatest challenge up to that time. According to genetic studies, the human population, never very numerous, may have dropped to as few as 2000 individuals worldwide. Some scientists link this population loss to the explosion of the Toba super volcano which they believe caused dangerous environmental changes. Others do not. But something took place that nearly wiped our species off the face of the earth.
As a species, we are not blessed with an immortality gene. Read more